DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

Reader Comments

1 • jolicloud (by guy on 2010-04-26 09:23:02 GMT from United States)
anyone try this one? it works great on my sony laptop!2 • SL (by Landor on 2010-04-26 09:25:54 GMT from Canada)
I had a feeling you'd end up doing the review of SL. I was wrong in one guess though. With RHEL 5.5 released I thought you would have waited (which shouldn't be long really) for SL to follow suit with a coinciding release.

Good review.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor3 • Xandros: "Users don't care about Linux." (by uz64 on 2010-04-26 09:50:57 GMT from United States)
As a Linux user, I believe it is more accurate to say that I don't care about Xandros.4 • xandros and lindows (by david on 2010-04-26 09:57:50 GMT from United States)
I thought Xandros took over Lindows/Linspire? What was the point, if not to enter the desktop market. I was one of those suckers to pay for both Xandros and Lindows.5 • Meego (by Harry Barracuda on 2010-04-26 10:08:38 GMT from Bahrain)
"The MeeGo project believes these two pillars form the technical foundations for next generation platforms and usages in the mobile and device platforms space."

Well the MeeGo project should give a little more consideration to Android, IMHO.6 • moblin aka meego aka meNOTgo anywhere (by meanpt on 2010-04-26 11:31:27 GMT from Portugal)
:( ... so far no iso file was made available for downloading. Not a good start at all ... :( ...7 • 6 Month Release Cycle Test Bed For LTS Type Distros (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-04-26 11:59:55 GMT from United States)
The 6 month release cycle is good test beds for distributions and that's all they should be used for in my opinion. I use to be caught up in the gotta have the latest and greatest and would move to the newest release every 6 months. Then I found that it was better to stick with say a LTS distribution or one that would release every 2 years or so. You get important updates and can also get the latest applications if you want them. I still like to download and test different distros just to stay in the mix and for the fun of it but for a stable system that you can always count on I believe it's best to stick with a LTS type distro.8 • Xandros (by Walter on 2010-04-26 12:02:48 GMT from United States)
the ms windows puppet ..they bought a great OS (linspire) and destroyed it because it gave windows a run for its money. I wondow how much they recieved from Bill for this back door acquisition . i dont give a flip for xandros.9 • Mandriva 2010.1 Beta 2 (by thomas on 2010-04-26 12:28:15 GMT from Norway)
Seems like the beta 2 is late...10 • Scientific (by Nelson Rokafella on 2010-04-26 12:44:31 GMT from United States)
Nice review of Scientific. I am not sure if I can find any compelling reasons in this review that would motivate me to pick it over any other xyz distro though. If that was the intent then o.k. The main thing is stability over cutting edge. I guess that would be a reason. Anyway it was nice to hear about a lesser known distro.

Here is a nice review of PCLINUXOS with screenshots:

http://cristalinux.blogspot.com/2010/04/pclinuxos-2010-review.html11 • ...release date of Mandriva Spring (by Steve on 2010-04-26 12:51:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
...anyone know?12 • Meanpt; Meego is more of an embedded distro (by anonymous coward on 2010-04-26 12:59:35 GMT from Canada)
ISO for general install would be interesting to see but Meego is more of firmware for embedded OS. You'll need to look at installing the developer's environment or wait until it hits hardware like the N900 firmware update rumored to be coming. It's not really a "burn the ISO and install on your lappy" type distribution (though, it would be interesting to see that happen in future). My personal grief is that they dumped a good package manager like apt-get to instead base it on rpm.. wft?13 • Scientific (by Anonymous on 2010-04-26 13:08:03 GMT from Canada)
All packages from Scientific are available and up to date in Arch and Ubuntu (a little bit less up to date than Arch, but way more than Scientific). I cannot find any reason to switch to this distro.14 • Xandros (by Tony on 2010-04-26 13:36:04 GMT from United States)
I gave up on Xandros after they started sleeping in bed with Micro$oft. I supported them from the days of Corel and purchased Xandros four times (4 released versions). I switched to Ubuntu after they disgusted me with their M$ deal and I have never looked back! Thanks Xandros for introducing me to a real Desktop OS called Ubuntu.15 • Xandros (by Todd R. on 2010-04-26 13:57:48 GMT from United States)
Laughed, sorry..

"With no new Xandros Desktop release since November 2006, perhaps it's time to put Xandros on our long (and growing) list of discontinued distributions...."

Do you think so? ;)16 • RE 2: premature review (by Jesse on 2010-04-26 14:10:59 GMT from Canada)
Landor, thanks for the kudos on the review of Scientific. Honestly, I had thought of waiting until a version 5.5 came out. However, given the conservative nature of the Enterprise 5.x series, I felt I'd get much the same experience running a fully updated 5.4 as I would installing a brand new 5.5. Perhaps I was a bit premature.

I was also eager to get a review of SL out before the wave of big name releases hit. Ubuntu, Fedora and a few others are coming soon and I thought SL might get lost in the shuffle.17 • Canon Print Drivers (by Sly on 2010-04-26 14:22:06 GMT from United States)
Canon-Europe apparently releases print drivers for Linux distros, but those drivers are not available on their US website. You think the 800 pound gorilla (MS) twisted their arm, or the company doesn't believe Linux is popular in the US.18 • more than just bugs (by Mutazz on 2010-04-26 16:03:26 GMT from Hong Kong)
Comment deleted (disrespectful).
19 • Xandros (by GJ on 2010-04-26 16:04:23 GMT from Belgium)
I agree with answer no 15, i think it is time to make a different column for the distro's that are NOT free ( a small one )20 • @18 (by Annonymous Coward on 2010-04-26 16:18:10 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
21 • Macpup (by DrCR on 2010-04-26 16:36:06 GMT from United States)
Oh the religious jabs that could be said, but I shall refrain.

Macpup...I still haven't been able to find a distro that fully supports my MacbookPro 3,1 generation. Main problem is overheating. Didn't see any mention of Mac hardware orientedness. Guess it's "Mac" in aesthetic design only.22 • Meego (by Patrick on 2010-04-26 17:19:22 GMT from United States)
@5I for one am happy with the push for a serious mobile GNU/Linux OS by two companies that have the muscle to give it a push (Intel and Nokia). Sure, Android is Linux based and open source, but it is nothing like the Linux systems that we know. Just a modified Linux kernel with a totally different user land. Meego on the other hand seems to stick with normal Linux components like the GNU utilities, udev, GStreamer, Qt, etc. Should make it much easier for open source developers to get into the mobile game on an open platform instead of having to buy in to some proprietary development model, and to have some of the mobile apps stream back into our familiar desktops.

@6That's silly, they haven't done any release yet. Let's wait and see what will be offered at the first release, alright? Still it may not be an ISO as you expect, aimed at the end user, but more of a base systems aimed at device manufacturers. It seems that is more the goal of Meego: to provide a base for device manufacturers to customize for their products. Not aimed at the average distro hopper at all. Still, if the end result will be anything like Nokia's Maemo on the N900 but more open, I will be one happy camper.23 • SL (by bert barten on 2010-04-26 17:29:22 GMT from Netherlands)
Yesterday I installed Scientific Linux instead of PcLinuxOS 2010 XFCE. On my Thinkpad R40e I found this distro very slow. When I tried the live cd of Scientific Linux I noticed that this distro worked faster. So I tried it om my hard drive and I am very satisfied. It works very reliable and fast. I am getting more info from the developer dawson how to upgrade firefox and open office. For every user who wants a reliable and fast distro I highly advice Scientific Linux. On the site of www.dedoimedo.com I read this very nice review with the conclusion:Scientific Linux is a perfect desktop distro. See the following link:http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/scientific-linux.htm24 • @12: Meego: not even for moblin ... (by meanpt on 2010-04-26 17:29:56 GMT from Portugal)
... not even for moblin you'll find an ISO file, unless you download some free image writer, "stamp" a CD with it and ... well, hack that image to a file ... that's too trickier to ... well, "history" taught me trickier stuff usually doesn't worth the hype in time consuming and effort ...25 • Scientific and ... (by meanpt on 2010-04-26 17:35:43 GMT from Portugal)
... there is well, not sure about the kind of family relation but ... there is Fermi Linux ...based on Scientific ... shouldn't we get a family portrait? ... aready read nice things about it but one never knows ...26 • Reply2: ¨I gave up on Xandros after they started sleeping in bed with Micro$oft (by Anonymous Coward on 2010-04-26 17:42:27 GMT from United States)
I was a Suses´s User for many years... and gave up on OpenSuse for the very same reason!

And, It is not that I am ¨anti-Microsoft¨, it is because after the deal, slowly but surely Novell´s OpenSuse became like MS, a distro where the glitter became obviously a higher priority than the Linux foundation on quality and performances.

This certainly bring up the topic of what we would be willing to pay for on a Linux Distro?

I will give it a shot:¨I would be willing to pay for real enhancements of the Linux base (available for all distros) where there is a need and no real answers now¨/This may include a universal generic package manager which allows to install from either RPM and DEB packages. In my view Linux, on the Desktop should move towards a single package format which would allow for a single package to be installed on most Linux Distros. This would include the 32/64 bits kernel detection, etc...Also a clean standard GUI (perhaps Qt based?) available on all distros would help!I am sure this is doable, but it is my feeling that not all Linux vendors will embrace this with enthousiasm, because controlling the packages give them a marketing edge.But I would expect Red Hat to support this effort: they have been the most open Linux companies of all. (I have no vested interest here).Best regards.

Anonymous Coward.27 • The dead of Xandros (by Basilio Guzman on 2010-04-26 18:01:53 GMT from Puerto Rico)
I am sorry to see the Xandros team ending (at least officially) the great distro they developed. It was an expected death, because they were not doing anything in recent years, besides supporting the customer base. With so many other distributions bringing innovation to the table, it is no surprise a dormant distro is going off the Linux horizon. R.I.P. Xandros.28 • Scientific Linux comments, resources (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-26 19:41:21 GMT from United States)
First, kudos to Jesse for a brief but accurate and balanced review of Scientific Linux 5.4. I think it points out the advantages and disadvantages of using the distro quite well.

@Jesse: RHEL 5.5 backported a lot of additional hardware support. That would have been the one advantage of waiting for SL 5.5. Of course, SL takes a bit more time with their releases than CentOS so it may be a month or two yet.

#13: The reasons to use Scientific Linux or any other enterprise/LTS release boil down to rock solid stability and reliability as well as outstanding security. Package selection is always behind the consumer desktop distros like Ubuntu, both in terms of age and in terms of quantity. That's a given. However, in terms of problem free long term operation, which is what enterprise customers really want, they can't be beat.

It all comes down to what you want in a distro. I am sick and tired of breakage and regressions. If you use a more conservative distro that becomes much less of an issue or it disappears entirely. That isn't limited to enterprise distros, BTW. I'd include everything from Slackware to SalixOS to Debris Linux in a list of more conservative distros.

@All: For those who find the package selection in Red Hat, Scientific Linux, CentOS a bit lacking I highly recommend Dag Wieer's repository. Yes, I'm always a bit concerned about third party repos but Dag Wieers has been doing this for a long time and his track record for producing quality packages is simply excellent. It's a great place to find those missing pieces that other distro repos have. http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages.php

Please note that using more than one third party repository is neither user friendly nor intuitive. Quality of packages in these repos varies widely. In simple terms, the less you use from third party sources the better your chances of maintaining the stability and reliability RHEL is known for. The more you dip into these repos the more likely it becomes that the advantages of an enterprise distro will simple disappear. If you want cutting edge, IMHO, you should stick with a cutting edge distro. OTOH, the repos do have drivers for newer hardware which may not have been backported into the RHEL kernel.

My personal solution (which may not be good for you) is to use these repos only when I really have to.29 • #7: Of test beds and LTS, #25: Fermi Linux (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-26 19:51:41 GMT from United States)
@Eddie Wilson: In general I agree with what you wrote. The only exception is when you have really new hardware which may not be supported by the somewhat older code in an LTS or enterprise distro. I'll also point out that while Red Hat backports newer hardware support into their older kernels Ubuntu does NOT do the same with their LTS releases, which, to me, is a distinct disadvantage. The net result is that is you have newer hardware there is a much better chance that it will "just work" with Red Hat, CentOS or Scientific Linux than with an aging LTS release.

#25: I looked at the Fermi Linux pages and it appears they are using Scientific Linux and adding to it. They even refer to it as "Scientific Linux Fermi" and FermiLab has always been involved in the development of SL. I'm not sure there is an advantage for most users to run SLF and I'm not een sure it can really be considered a separate distro.30 • RE: 16 - 18/20 @ CM (by Landor on 2010-04-26 20:58:06 GMT from Canada)
#16

I understand completely. The only reason I had personally hoped you would have reviewed 5.5 is also kind of redundant in my respect (since I probably would have installed it before you got a chance to) is the ath9k drivers that were backported. That made me perk up the minute I read the 5.5 release notes, and obviously the opportunity to dump a solid kde 3.xx series with said wireless on the asus 1005ha that will be extreme long term support. I think that should be RHEL's moniker, ELTS. :)

#18/20

I find these two comments extremely rude and have no place within our community.

:CM

One other thing to point out about some of Dag's packages is they are extremely dated as well, some of course. There's 1000's of packages there and it's boon for anyone using RHEL or an RHEL/Fedora based distribution.

I have to agree with you on the LTS comparison between RHEL and Ubuntu. Even Debian which Ubuntu is based off of backports for the community to enjoy advances in hardware. It's nice that Ubuntu does something that not a lot of distributions do, provides and LTS, they could go a step further than just providing security updates. This in my opinion makes them a non-contender for the Enterprise/Server role when going up against the likes of RH that will support newer hardware.

On that note as well, it does take a fair bit of time for RHEL to release backported drivers and such out into the wild (Debian is no different in this regard). Take a look at the recent 5.5 release (which on that release you could consider their position on say the ath9k driver as stable) and how long the ath9k has been released. I personally can't wait to try SL 5.5 and see if the driver is indeed stable and working well on my netbook. Reason being, I want to see (if any) how the the driver holds up in comparison to recent releases that has improved it's reliability and functionality over the last two kernel releases, considerably.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor31 • @ 30 (by forlin on 2010-04-26 21:13:56 GMT from Portugal)
Well said, Landor. At present days it seems that many are afraid to mention anything positive about Ubunto.

"It's nice that Ubuntu does something that not a lot of distributions do, provides and LTS, they could go a step further than just providing security updates. This in my opinion makes them a non-contender for the Enterprise/Server role when going up against the likes of RH that will support newer hardware."

And I do not use Ubunto. But I can see the good work they have done to improve Linux at the desktop. Due to our free software, all distros may benefit from their work, if they want.32 • Testing SL 5.5 (by Landor on 2010-04-26 21:21:36 GMT from Canada)
I just did a search and found that on April 19th 2010 the folks at CERN/SL announced an available test for the 5.5 release (here http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/news.shtml )

If you don't want to mess around with testing the new release here's a bit of info regarding the 5.5's release date (also on the same page):

* SLC55 version will become the default SLC5 production version as of:

Monday 03.05.2010 *************************

providing that no show-stopper problems are found.

Hope that helps someone.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor33 • @32 (by Anonymous on 2010-04-26 21:35:12 GMT from Portugal)
Regarding Sl, I tried it before. Older versions worked for me. Newer did not. I'll give a chance to this latest one. yes, I'm still a distro hopper.34 • Scientific Linux when it's 6.0 (by Jati on 2010-04-26 21:37:32 GMT from Finland)
RHEL 6 beta looked very much like Fedora 12, so people interested in a free clone like Scientific Linux or CentOS might want to test Fedora 12 now and then install 6.0 versions some time after RHEL 6 is released.35 • Scientific? (by LLR on 2010-04-26 21:53:00 GMT from Hungary)
The reviewer's colorful imagination about the users of this distro is in one respect not too far from reality: it is for the users of networked computers where Internet access is realized through a server. For a home environment, the Internet connection in which is provided by the telephone or cable company in some sort of DSL form, this distro does not provide the necessary facilities to establish a connection. Why? Is Scientific Linux really only for research centers, college or office environments?

The second issue leads to the unanswered question: What makes Scientific Linux really scientific? Obviously not the graphical user interface, the usual office applications, music, or game related software, rather some sort of math and scientific applications. But, we have not hired a word of those. In comparison, I would mention Knoppix/Math/ICMS2006, or the other Knoppix derivative Knosciences, and perhaps Poseidon Linux. (And may be some other of the higher education related distros.) Those distros list number of applications that deserves the scientific adjective.

Not long ago, I looked at Calculate Linux that finally got full Internet configuration facility, but for this time the printer configuration has become crippled. Both Calculate and Scientific have exemplary readability. I wish that one day both become fully functional, and enjoyable.36 • #35: How so?, #34: Not exactly; #32: Thank you; #30: Dag repository (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-26 22:31:07 GMT from United States)
#35: "For a home environment, the Internet connection in which is provided by the telephone or cable company in some sort of DSL form, this distro does not provide the necessary facilities to establish a connection. "

Really? What's missing? I have a cable modem here and DSL where I lived previously and had no problems connecting. I really wonder what tools you find to be missing.

#34: While RHEL 6 is based on Fedora 12 it isn't exactly the same. I don't think you really get the RHEL experience from Fedora.

#32: Landor, thank you for doing a little research. Good to hear that SL 5.5 will be out in two weeks.

#30: Fair point on the older apps in the Dag repository. You have to remember that RHEL 5.x includes not only an older kernel and apps but older core libraries as well. Sometimes it's simply impossible for Dag Wieers or anyone else to build new or recent versions of given apps without upgrading core libraries and perhaps the tool chain as well, which is likely to break other older apps. Dag is pretty much stuck building the last version that works against the RHEL 5 libraries.37 • RE: 31/33 (by Landor on 2010-04-26 22:36:08 GMT from Canada)
#31

I think Ubuntu has done a lot for Linux. I do believe that also a lot of what has been done through Ubuntu has had a fair bit of financial/public relations intent behind it of course. That notwithstanding, some of the things were out of pocket distribution of cds, massive media coverage, a framework that has encompassed the community on a scale that has never been reached before (that specific point alone should be highly regarded, and I wish they could expand that to encompass other distributions, though of course many wouldn't be too quick to jump on board as we've seen). I could name quite a few more. To further the comment about the framework, they've definitely raised the bar for how a distribution should approach its community and offer much in the way of involvement. I don't find Ubuntu perfect in this regard or should be considered the Leader in it, also though, I don't see any real prospects able to fill Ubuntu/Canonical's shoes in this aspect at present.

All just opinion though. I'm sure others would see things differently.

#33

I found a couple versions lacking as well. Most likely as you are, I'm very demanding about what I'll run on my systems and that's not just about recently released software and such. I usually take great care in choosing something. Aspects involving stability, reliability, hardware functionality, security and support are among the most important. It's after that I'll take into account versions of/up to date applications. For me SL in the past hasn't fit that criteria perfectly, but only in regard to hardware. All other areas I've been pleased with. Hopefully for the netbook this release could become my mainstay on the ASUS 1005A. I still intend to use other distributions on it, including Fedora 13 and Gentoo (which I still haven't got around to building yet).

-----

You deleted the comment before I had a chance to respond, Ladislav..I'm sure that is a good thing too. :) You were up early too. I hope you slept well.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor38 • Q&A, by J.S. (by forlin on 2010-04-26 22:49:26 GMT from Portugal)
Dodging-the-rapid-fire asks: Is six months too short of a release cycle?

I liked and agree the way Jesse explained the question.

I'd like to add that I use a distro with a 3 month release cycle. The developers build the distro in a way that users doesn't have any problem to upgrade from one release to the next one. It is good for those who (like me), like to know, try and see what's going on, at the bleeding edge. They even provide a rolling release, (at their testing branch), that use to be enough stable to be usable, with a new iso made available every 2/3 days, with the very last of all main Linux packages.39 • @ 37 - RE: 31 (by Forlin on 2010-04-26 23:17:16 GMT from Portugal)
What I think is that the community (Linux at the Desktop), need a real commercial competitor to the Ubuntu. I mention a commercial one, because these starts with some capital to invest, and are organized entities that may better coordinate their efforts. Also, the commercial distros may build stronger anti-corpus against the fragmentation we see too often at the private distros. In my opinion, another distro that is making an effort to improve in the desktop, is Fedora, a distro that is also baked up by a corporate. The corporate distros use to have more money to apply in R&D. II can't wait to test the final 13 release. Other thing you mentioned, "I usually take great care in choosing something. Aspects involving stability, reliability, hardware functionality, security and support are among the most important.", surely is important. My distro hope trends to ignore some of your said concerns, although you a right. I have about 7 partition, all with a different distro. Stable releases, and one or two "kind" of betas. But for "classified" work, I go with the ones that I know to be secure and safe :) Well, no state secrets here, :) just the right to some privacy. ha... and I would like to see the grow of another big community, like Debian. Again, to promote competition and innovation.40 • re:26 --what we would be willing to pay for on a Linux Distro? (by dopher on 2010-04-26 23:29:25 GMT from Belgium)
I already pay for a linux distro (by donations) and also for applications (also by donations), but i'm not willing to pay more then 50 euro for a distro if the developpers of the applications/modules/etc don't get a certain percentage of that fee.

The base is important though, and deserves donations. But don't forget the apps.41 • @39 (by fernbap on 2010-04-26 23:40:15 GMT from Portugal)
I think there is more than enough competition in the Linux world.However, most of Linux distros try to cater some nice niches inside the Linux userbase, while others try to get people from ouside the Linux userbase towards Linux.Ubuntu's bet always was (i think) to get people from windoze to Linux. Not many can do that, because it requires a solid financial investment to fight M$ in it's own ground. That is what Canonical is doing.Fedora is the testing ground for a enterprise Linux product, Red Hat, and does its job well. Red Hat is directed towards the enterprize business and has been highly successful at that.Ubuntu, however, doesn't have such "testing distro", which clearly shows the target market intended. It's not just the companies, but the end user. That is probably its main quality and also its main weakness. You can't cater everyone, you have to compromize.There are many distros directed to the end user, but not to enterprises, and they have other requirements, which is something that many end users don't seem to realize. They keep fighting for their linux userbase, but they do much less (if anything) in increasing the Linux user base.Yes, perhaps it would be good for Linux if another distro based on the same business model than Ubuntu appeared, and equaly well funded, but that is something very hard to find.42 • @40 - by dopher (by Forlin on 2010-04-26 23:54:08 GMT from Portugal)
(Well, it looks like I've docked here today).

You placed a good question. How and who and how much to finance Linux in the desktop?

Does donation are enough, and does they benefit all, as per the value of all who contribute, at the various areas?

Does sometime Linux desktop users would be prepared to pay some kind of fee, to promote the continued required development, or even accelerate it?

Or let's all assume that "it ain't break, don't fix it" ?43 • RE: 21 MacPup is not PowerPup (by ChiJoan on 2010-04-26 23:59:14 GMT from United States)
See this post on Puppy Forum:

We know that Mark is a floss lover and believer. But not only. He is also a successful entrepreneur. This people use to get good advice from consulting companies, before advancing their projects. He is now trying to develop at three fields (at least): Desktop, Cloud and Severs. The most heavy the investment the longer is it's return. And he is investing hard. I agree when you say that it is very difficult to appear another agent like Ubunto. Anyway, (and this will require still many months) if it become apparent that Ubunto will turn into a profitable company, maybe others would try to follow their steps, with their own strategies. Maybe at the desktop, or also at the desktop, or only servers..... let's see.

It is right that they are focused on bringing new users. Witch can only mean from Windoze. The most positive point I see about that, is the possibility that among thousands, we may gain a few young people, interested in Linux, and willing to learn, who may in the future hold and continue the work of our great developers, many of them are now with quite at an advanced age. I mean, we need new and young people to assure our continuity and improvement.

Regarding Fedora, they are very careful about avoiding any exposure to IP's. I was not interested at Fedora 10, because it was quite dated, when I arrived to Linux. Then I was unable to install 11 at my hardware. Waited to F 12, and I loved it. A quick search, and I was able to install nvidea, flash and the various codecs. These are my main show stops, in case I cannot get them working. So, it's true Fedora is the Red Hat "laboratory", but lately,they have been improving in the desktop too. And maybe, they are the most secure Linux distro.45 • @44 (by fernbap on 2010-04-27 01:33:14 GMT from Portugal)
"It is right that they are focused on bringing new users. Witch can only mean from Windoze. The most positive point I see about that, is the possibility that among thousands, we may gain a few young people, interested in Linux, and willing to learn, who may in the future hold and continue the work of our great developers, many of them are now with quite at an advanced age. I mean, we need new and young people to assure our continuity and improvement."

Not only that. Once the Linux user base grows enough, the main software companies will start to think it might be a good idea to produce software for Linux as well, and that is the main reason why i think Linux needs to increase its user base.46 • Re. 14 (by uz64 on 2010-04-27 04:08:50 GMT from United States)
Wait--you mean you're thanking Xandros for pissing you off and screwing you, and forcing you to look elsewhere? As a greedy business, Xandros is just laughing all the way to the bank. You're the only one at a loss here, not them (it was also their choice to say "f*** Linux"), they're profiting off of you, and you're saying thanks. Seriously, WTF?47 • re: 46 (by jake on 2010-04-27 04:26:10 GMT from United States)http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarcasm

HTH, HAND.48 • problems with pclinuxos boot to ram (by gnomic on 2010-04-27 07:36:03 GMT from New Zealand)
Keen to try the new and fab PClinuxOS of 2010, I downloaded the ZEN-mini and LXDE-mini versions from mirror.internode.on.net. The checksums for the downloaded iso images were good and I burned on Verbatim branded media at 4x. With both versions I tried the boot to ram option on several machines. There was no problem booting, but I was unable to remove the boot CD once the system was up. Moreover the media seemed to have disappeared, they weren't mounted and didn't appear to be accessible. During the boot process I saw a message which was something like 'unable umount /initrd/cdrom'. Anyone seen anything similar? Not being able to use the optical drive seems to take away the point of booting to ram.49 • Xandros - recent activity (by SilentSam on 2010-04-27 07:38:13 GMT from Canada)
Actually Xandros had a release within the past year: Xandros Presto, www.prestomypc.com.Xandros was also the main designer behind the now non available Linux versions of the eeepc.50 • @48 (by Anonymous on 2010-04-27 07:51:34 GMT from United States)
opened a terminal, su'd to root, and run "umount /initrd/cdrom51 • Design (by Sanjay on 2010-04-27 07:53:07 GMT from India)
Every Linux distro is competing for features and improvement but improvement in the area of video editing,Photoshop like software or making GIMP better than Photoshop is always ignored why? If Linux want to replace windows and Mac from market then at least they require a software better than Photoshop(might be GIMP),AVID,MAC's finalcut pro(avidmux is not a suitable video editing tool lacks lots of feature),Gaming .My advice is stop bringing distro in each 6 months ,set a goal first.If we want Linux presence everywhere than we have a solution for above mention problem.

http://www.linux2u.co.cc52 • #49 eeepc (by Master Crash on 2010-04-27 07:53:26 GMT from United States)
Why is Linux not available on the eeepc anymore? My original eeepc 701 had a custom version of Xandros which worked well.53 • RE:43 MacPup is not PowerPup (by ChiJoan) (by Anonymous on 2010-04-27 09:01:51 GMT from United States)
Note that I said fully compatible.

All Macbook Pros are Intel-based, FYI, otherwise they would be 'Powerbooks.' With all due respect, you must be living under a rock to not know Apple with Intel a while back. ;)54 • RE#36 (by LLR on 2010-04-27 13:23:24 GMT from Hungary)
Caitlyn, my comments are directed specifically toward Scientific Linux. If you have installed this distro I like to know more about it. On the other hand, if you talk about some other distros that you tested, you should realize that various distros come with various capabilities. The simplest setup allows one to choose between wired and wireless. Wired actually means that your computer is part of a network. In a home environment, this setup is most likely useless. Unfortunately, there are number of distros that follow this setup.

I need to enter somehow the ISP provided username and password to establish a connection. The simplest and most direct way to do that is to select PPPoE from the linear list provided by the utility distro Pmagic (PartitionMagic). Number of distros have a more or less standardized network configuration box with tabs for Wired, Wireless, Mobil Broadband, VPN, and DSL. In this case, I shell start with selecting DSL, naming the connection, filing the user name and password, and checking that the connection is to be used by everyone to avoid a security lockout, and try it. Mandriva, Fedora, ArtistX, PCLinuxOS, Calculate have worked this way whereas Linux Mint and SimplyMEPIS have failed. OpnSUSE has the most cumbersome setup that needs patience and good nerves, but with relentless persistence eventually works.

I believe it is reasonable to expect that the reviewers would at least check out that the facilities of Internet access configuration for home use are available.55 • RE DSL in 54 (by Jesse on 2010-04-27 15:14:00 GMT from Canada)
@LLRHow do you mean those distros (Mint, MEPIS) failed? Do you mean you don't think they have tools to connect to DSL or do you mean the tools provided don't work?

I know with Mint, connecting to DSL is as easy as clicking on the network icon in the system tray, click the Manage Connections button and clicking the DSL tab. Works well for me.

It's almost exactly the same process to get DSL working on Scientific. Right-click the network icon in the system tray, go down to Edit Connections and click on the DSL tab. Again, works fine for me.

So, yes, Scientific does provide the required tools to get on-line with a DSL connection.56 • RE:54, DSL? No Problem Here with Mepis or Mint (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-04-27 16:05:35 GMT from United States)
Maybe it's the way that your DSL is set up but I've have had no problems with either Mint or Mepis In connection to DSL. I've tried several distros in the past year and haven't ran into any problems yet with DSL. But as with all things your experience may vary. I have not tried Scientific Linux so I can't comment on that one.57 • Leroy (by wired? on 2010-04-27 17:45:04 GMT from Serbia)
I've tried Scientific from live CD, (which is btw the fastest live CD I tried, other than those distros made specifically as live), and just like every other distro I either tested that way or installed it recognized my wired (in my case, cable) network automatically. I have friends who have ADSL with the same result-they connect automatically, no clicks whatsoever. I can't remember when was the last time I had to manually set up my internet.

Even my 3G dongle works with just two clicks in Mint, and in PCLOS that I tried recently, while in Ubuntu it takes some tinkering, though hopefully that will be fixed in the final version (I understand that was a 9.10 regression, worked fine in 9.04).

LLR I'm really sorry to hear you have to go to all that trouble, but I don't think it's anything to do with the distros you mention.58 • Internet connectivity and Scientific Linux (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-27 18:30:25 GMT from United States)
My experience with internet connectivity in Scientific Linux is the same others reported. It's all automatic. No problems at all. BTW, DSL *IS* wired internet and many DSL modems provide nothing more than an ethernet port and expect a PC configured for DHCP. There is no lack of tools at all in Scientific Linux and it seems, LLR, based on your description that you got hung up on terminology. Did you try to get any help with your connectivity problems or did you just dismiss the distro out of hand when you saw the choices were "wired" and "wireless"? I actually have yet to find any modern Linux distro that doesn't handle DSL properly.59 • RE#55, 56,57 and 58 (by LLR on 2010-04-27 20:38:52 GMT from Hungary)
Possibly your DSL and my DSL connections are not exactly the same. I have emphasized that " I need to enter somehow the ISP provided username and password to establish a connection." And I have to do the same thing under PPPoE in Pmagic. This just does not happen automatically; I have to do it myself. In a wired only option, one cannot enter anything. It is true that "wired" is set in all distros as the default connection. But actually that by itself has never established a working connection for me since the browser cannot find its own home page using such an automatically generated faked connection. Obviously, I have to reject such a setup.

As far as Mint 8 and MEPIS 8.5 concerned, they got the proper configuration box, but having completed the necessary entries do not result in a working connection. By returning to edit the entries, the password is missing in both cases. I just may hope that for the next issue this will be corrected.60 • It's all in the terminology (by Michael Raugh on 2010-04-27 22:27:32 GMT from United States)
@59: LLR, what you call "DSL" we North Americans call "dial-up" and it's an increasingly uncommon situation, especially for a server-centric distribution. Typically over here the DSL modem handles the PPPoE issues and, as Caitlyn has already told you, presents an Ethernet interface on the inside for connecting to your machine or network switch.

In every distro I've seen "wired" means simply a physical Ethernet connection to an existing network, either a switch/hub or functioning DSL/fiber/cable router. There's nothing faked about it; it's meant for use with an existing Ethernet network. That is clearly not the situation you have, but I doubt the distros are going to change that to accommodate you when there are other connection settings that *are* designed for transient PPPoE connections such as yours.

-MR61 • RE: 59/60 (by Landor on 2010-04-27 22:50:23 GMT from Canada)
I've read many times in this situation that Klaus' KNOPPIX extremely simple to setup in this regard. That's only what I've read over the last couple years though. I've been on cable for about a decade or close to that myself.

Speaking of KNOPPIX, I recently received the latest issue of Linux Magazine and I must say the latest release is as nice as always. Klaus really knows his stuff, that's for sure.

You still selected "wired" and have to go through the manual ethernet configuration steps to enter the user name and password. I can only assume LLR didn't find the process intuitive enough and failed to find the configuration steps. Michael, I think what LLR is describing isn't the old 56K dial-up connection but rather an intermittent DSL connection with manual authentication required. I don't think it's a fault of a distro but, with all due respect to LLR, it's user error in not finding what he needed. It's all there.

The first h got chopped off when I cut and paste. Sorry.64 • @48; PCLOS (by The_Dadu on 2010-04-28 01:00:51 GMT from United States)
As far as I know after using PCLOS for the last 4 years, the distro does not claim to run entirely in RAM from the LiveCD; you need to leave the disk in the machine if you don't install it.65 • @1; JoliCloud (by The_Dadu on 2010-04-28 01:05:11 GMT from United States)
I'm experimenting with JoliCloud on a couple of eeepc's (701 4g and 1000HA). It seems to work okay, but I've had nothing but problems applying updates using the delivered processes. They don't give you any idea of how big, long, or time left for an update. I have used the apt-get update successfully, but that is a nuisance when they supply one that doesn't work properly.66 • Re 65 Try Leenux (by glp3 on 2010-04-28 01:55:23 GMT from United States)
@1,I tried Jolicloud a couple of weeks ago but did not like the package management in that distro. I switched to Leeenux and have been running it on a EeePc 1000HA for the past 3 weeks. I have had no problems with it. You may want to give it a try.

Glp367 • RE60..63 (by LLR on 2010-04-28 09:00:24 GMT from Hungary)
Thanks to all the responses. This is more than I ever expected. It seems that using certain loose terms like "wired" and "DSL - Digital Subscriber Line" can lead to good deal of misunderstanding. What even further complicates the issue that these terms are also semi-official Linux terms since they appear as tab labels in the Network Connection window. For instance, in Fedora, Mandriva, PCLOS, or ArtistX right click on the network ikon, select Edit Connections and the Network Connection window pops up, the left tab of which is labeled as "Wired", and the right tab as "DSL". I happened to use these terms implied by these labels.

One may argue that it would be more appropriate to call the right tab PPPoE. But, that is in the scope of Linux documentation. Or, perhaps, one who is in the fortunate situation that the Internet connection has worked out of the box, and have had no reason to look at the Network Connection window at all, then how (s)he would know that my usage of these terms is not as loose as ordinary conversation would suggest. My mistake is perhaps of assuming that all "DSL" connections require a PPPoE kind of configuration. Nonetheless, I still firmly believe that Internet access configuration should work for all sort of connections in all distros.68 • pppoe sl5 (by asasega on 2010-04-28 10:25:48 GMT from Romania)http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/livecd/54/i386/livecd_SL54_gnome_2009-11-20_rpmlist.txt

sl live cd doesnt include rp-pppoe(point to point over eternet)(roaring penguin) packageit was the same with sl 4.x live cd'si have the same connection type as the other usermy ISP is providing me directly a CAT 5 LAN cable that i plug into the ethernet port if you install from the DVD then the package is installed69 • Off-topic (by Unome on 2010-04-28 12:01:37 GMT from United States)
I just tried Wolvix build 58. One word: smooth.

it looks like you don't have a router.If that's true, then you really should buy one - if only for the added safety.They are not very expensive.You give the needed login information to the router once and from then it enters username and password for you forever - as long as it lives.In my small home network (desk and laptop) I've been behind a router for since I can remember - even with a 56K dial-up modem before I had DSL - and it saved me a lot of trouble.Then you'll have no ptoblem with Linux finding the network (just tell the router on setup it should use DHCP) - most distros should find it out-of-the-box, and that's the end of the story.In my opinion one should use a router to connect to the internet even if one's network consists only of 1 Computer - it has that many advantages in the end.71 • Few bits and bobs (by Barnabyh on 2010-04-28 13:18:10 GMT from South Africa)
Re. the requests made from time to time in discussions similar to comment no.26, "In my view Linux, on the Desktop should move towards a single package format which would allow for a single package to be installed on most Linux Distros", I believe there already is one and it comes as .bin files.They usually can be installed without problems on different distros, except when said distro is deviating too far from the standard. Most extractors/installers even check for or let you choose which distro you got installed, or there are different versions of .bin files for each distro. In my view this is probably as close as we'll ever come to 'unified' packages and it works well.

Re. LLR's DSL problems, I have to second Holer here. Get a router or a switch to plug into and no need to mess around with these settings any more. Most ISP's these days actually give you a modem/router box which is acting as your gateway to the internet and also as a firewall. In these circumstances, which appears to be pretty much the norm now, you are on your own private LAN similar to a company.I suppose that's where the confusion came from, most here would not expect you to connect with a (USB?) modem straight from your PC.

Hope you'll get it to work now after all the good advice. Good luck.72 • Missing Newsletter (by fstephens on 2010-04-28 16:08:48 GMT from United States)
What happened to the link to the GoblinX Newsletter?I don't use the distro, but I always enjoy it.I find it a very valuable asset for keeping informed and learning new things and always look for the link on Distrowatch to appear, usually on Sunday.I went to the website and one was indeed published:http://www.goblinx.com.br/en/73 • #67, #68, #69: Apology, correction, suggestions, Wolvix, LXDE Ubuntu distros (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-28 17:35:46 GMT from United States)
#68: Thanks for the post. I have never used the live CD version of Scientific Linux. I've always installed from DVD. I wasn't aware that the rp-pppoe package was excluded from the live CD.

#67: In light of the above, LLR, I owe you an apology. If you install from DVD then Scientific Linux should work for you. It seems there is such a thing as a distro without PPPoE support.

Having said that, the suggestion that you invest in a router is a pretty good one for a number of reasons. Most DSL routers have a rudimentary firewall that does IP masquerading, making it easy for you to use multiple computers in your household on a shared connection with literally zero effort. In our home (now on cable, not DSL) we use a wireless router which also provides a wired port. That wired port goes to a switch to feed our network ports around the house (this home was built wired for ethernet) and yet we also have wireless. It's no fuss, no muss, all pretty much automatic. We typically have four or five systems around the house since we're both computer professionals and, well... geeks.

#69: I agree that the last beta of Wolvix looked very good. I just wonder when they will actually get a full release out and if they can do both 32- and 64-bit. Sometimes a small project is just too small. I've always liked Wolvix but I just don't feel like I can rely on it being there for me in the future.

Why two Ubuntu based distros with a default LXDE desktop? It's simple. With FOSS anyone can create anything they want anytime they want. Duplication of effort is to be expected.

I also don't see how your post about distros can be off topic on DistroWatch. :)74 • RE:29, 30 Is Two Years That Long? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-04-28 17:45:05 GMT from United States)
@CM and Landor, I do understand what you are saying but we are talking about two (2) years between LTS releases. That is not a lot of time in my book. Some people may look at it different. I'm sure that in the server market with paid support things would be different and there would be no problem. However enabling extra repositories will allow anyone to keep up to date as much as they want to. I'll just have to try it out and see what happens.

Eddie75 • RE: 74 My own blasphemy (by Landor on 2010-04-28 18:30:36 GMT from Canada)
One thing that can be said about RHEL is the length of support. Now here's the blasphemy, after X-amount of years of support I would wager for an end-user of the desktop they "could" feel somewhat safe using it beyond that, if they were comfortable with the versions of the packages they had installed, with little to no fear of security issues.

Some of the bigger names also extend their support beyond the 6 month release cycle, as you probably already know. I'm shocked when people install so often for that reason alone. Does a point release for some piece of software really matter that much?

In my own quest, a new install has mainly been for hardware concerns. I can pretty well rule that out now though for almost all my systems and look forward to going with something long term with extended support. Versions matter little to me unless their functionality sucks in the way of what I can get done or stability. Just a note too, the only real issue has been with wireless, which is always a problem with Linux, especially if you refuse to use wireless cards that require non-free firmware blobs. I do take into account how recent the ath5k and 9k drivers are, respectively and am happy to see them truly matured at this stage of the game.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor76 • Scientific review (by Vukota on 2010-04-28 19:00:01 GMT from United States)
Am I the only one who didn't get this review? - What is so specific about Scientific Linux? - What is so "scientific" in it? - Why would I even bother to try it? What is it that it stands out about this distro from rest of the crowd? This is the piece I didn't get in this review.- Is it "rock solid"? I guess not.- It "works"... so what? Aren't all distros supposed to "work". There are enough of them that do in that area pretty good job, with better support and larger test base.

Packages mentioned and things describe I would expect in almost any distro these days (with more up to date stuff of course) . I and probably most of us are coming here to hear about something new, interesting or inovative, to see some new point of view (whether it is called flame or not), to hear something good or bad.77 • #74, #75: Some great points (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-28 19:15:20 GMT from United States)
@Eddie Wilson: I agree with you that two years is not long. Many businesses are still on RHEL 4 or even RHEL 3, both of which are still supported, though RHEL 3 is down to legacy support (no more updated releases). Even RHEL5 is approaching three years old and we only just got our first look at the RHEL 6 beta. Both the server market and the corporate/enterprise desktop market value security, stability and reliability over all else. If you want a desktop that simply doesn't break you'd be hard pressed to do better than CentOS or Scientific Linux even at home. Yes, a few other distros not aimed at the enterprise, especially Slackware and the very close offshoots (SalixOS, for example), pretty much achieve the same result and they, too, are very conservative in their package choices and their releases.

I also agree that judicious use of third party repositories can greatly enhance RHEL/Scientific Linux/CentOS/StartCom, Fedora, Slackware, and others that have a relatively small package selection, particularly when compared to Debian, Ubuntu and Mandriva. They key word here is judicious. You simply can't automate updates when you use a wide variety of repos due to potential conflicts, hence my comments above.

Anyway, you and I seem to be on the same page this week :)

#75: @Landor: Much of the above applies to your comments as well, of course. It sounds like your upgrade pattern follows the enterprise norm. It makes sense and it works well most of the time. My only reason for distro-hopping, only on a secondary partition or hard drive, is to write about them or to preview something that might make sense in my business, i.e.: the RHEL 6 beta :)

Wireless is steadily getting better. I probably could have avoided proprietary drivers entirely if I hadn't selected the HP Mini 110 netbook with it's Broadcom chipset. Even Broadcom support using FOSS drivers is under development and already in place for some of the older chipsets. I agree with you about the Atheros drivers. They have pretty much reached the point where you can assume an Atheros based card will "just work" under Linux.

There will always be people who want to try the latest and greatest. For them distros like Fedora and Ubuntu (6-month releases) are ideal. Just expect some breakage and don't tout something on the cutting edge as "Linux for human beings" as it is likely to cause heartache for new users who run into something that doesn't work as expected (or at all). I find I have the greatest success moving people from Windows when I manage the expectations and when I'm honest about issues that may arise.78 • #76: WHat makes SL special (by Anonymous on 2010-04-28 19:22:44 GMT from United States)
@vukota: What makes Scientific Linux special is that it is one of two free clones of the most successful enterprise distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is most definitely rock solid and more stable and reliable than most other distros, particularly those with frequent releases. Yes, all distros are supposed to "just work" but many, in practice, really don't, at least not for everybody. The stability, reliability and security of Scientific Linux and CentOS, with their excellent implementation of SELinux, for example, are really second to none.

I dare say you are wrong about the "larger test base". Many of the worlds largest corporations, governments (including the military and research labs), universities and other organizations used Red Hat or Scientific Linux. As SL is downstream from Red Hat and is essentially a clone with some added packages it benefits from all the testing and evaluation done by Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers. Ubuntu has a larger home user base, certainly, but if you really want to stress a distribution to the max try doing what some of Red Hat's customers do. I dare say what multimedia stuff you or I do pales in comparison to Hollywood production companies and animation studios, for example.

Jesse reviewed Scientific Linux because there were multiple requests from DWW readers to do just that. He is being responsive to his readership and I commend him for that.79 • Microsoft vs Google (by Merlin on 2010-04-28 19:50:40 GMT from Canada)
Should be interesting to see how Google and Microsoft battle it out on the Android "patent infringements". Wonder f we'll find out what they are this time :-)80 • Re: #78 SL Review (by sly on 2010-04-28 21:38:52 GMT from United States)
Based on your comment, I went back and re-read the SL review. As with my first impression, although it was generally a good review, it seemed kind of abbreviated and I really didn't get a good feel as to why I should try SL. In past reviews written by Jessie, my interest has been tweaked just enough to check out the distro. Are you opining that RH is 'the' gold standard for Linux and because SL is based on RH it is better than other distros?

For one thing, MS isn't facing Google directly -- they went after HTC, the hardware maker, who also designs phones for Windows Mobile.

For another, this isn't a lawsuit; they got HTC to sign a license deal and pay them royalties, so there's no need for MS to show anyone what HTC agreed to pay for.

And finally, the overriding reason why we'll never see the patents MS claims are infringed by Linux: because they know that the moment they cite specific patents as infringing, (A) the Linux community will write around them if necessary while (B) the FSF and allies take action to contest any that are even remotely weak, as any software patent is while the Supreme Court is still pondering the Bilski case.

-MR82 • #80: Response (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-04-28 22:42:03 GMT from United States)
"Are you opining that RH is 'the' gold standard for Linux and because SL is based on RH it is better than other distros? "

I am of the opinion that Red Hat is the gold standard and the overwhelming market leader (~70%) of the corporate Linux market. Unlike Windows, Red Hat got to where it is today with a very high quality product.

Does that mean that Red Hat or the free clones based on it are for everyone? No, not hardly. Does that make them the best distro for all uses? No, of course not.

Oh, and I apologize for not putting my name on #78. That was me.83 • SL (by Brian on 2010-04-28 22:44:28 GMT from United States)
Python (2.4 is not usable, GCC 4.1 not too bad) -> IMO, not acceptable that principle dev tools can be out of date to the point of breaking some important engineering/scientific stuff.

The engineering labs that I work in use Debian or Slack - stable and current84 • In response to a few questions (by Jesse on 2010-04-29 00:35:40 GMT from Canada)
A few people have asked what's so special about Scientific Linux and, for that matter, what's scientific about it.

Scientific tries to keep up with R and was kicked off originally to work in labs. So far as I can tell, that's about it. Personally, I think "Scientific" sounds nicer than "Lab Rat Linux". Though, really, why quibble about the name? Wolvix isn't used to track wolves and Devil Linux isn't used to summon evil spirits.... so far as I know. "Scientific" is short, to the point and relates to the distro's origins.

As for why you might want to use it? From what I can tell, it's rock solid and supported for about another four years. So if you want a Linux install that'll run for years without any surprises, Scientific is a good option. It's also armed with codecs and Flash, making it nice for home users who don't want to set up the extras. I'm pretty sure most of us know people who buy a computer once every five years or so and don't want to mess with it. Scientific is a good choice for them.

Some people like to try new things and run cutting edge software. Some people want their computers to be boring, predictable tools. If you fall into the latter group, Scientific is a good option.

If you read the review and weren't moved to try it, that's okay, I tend to be all over the map with what I write about and I'd be surprised if everyone found them all appealing. (If you did, I'd be in marketing, not IT.) Recently, I've looked at HelenOS (a tiny OS which doesn't do much yet), a Spanish distro, Igelle (which seems to be aimed at the mobile market), Haiku for the good-old-days crowd and sidux for the folks on the cutting edge. Really, I'm trying to mix it up so if you're bored by this week's piece you'll hopefully like next week's.

As usual, if you have a favourite distro which hasn't been talked about recently, let me know. My inbox has been pretty quiet this week. Let me know what you want to see covered and why.85 • Re: #84 SL (by sly on 2010-04-29 03:12:12 GMT from United States)
OK, NOW I'm convinced to give it a spin. : - )86 • @75 (by reuben on 2010-04-29 03:55:29 GMT from United States)
What is there to be shocked about? I get bored with the old release and install something new.87 • # 58 & 64 about PCLinuxOS boot to RAM but optical drive unusable (by gnomic on 2010-04-29 06:37:58 GMT from New Zealand)
# 58 Yup, umount /initrd/cdrom as root worked -- but why was it required? Never run across this before with distros that boot completely into RAM. Usual practise is for the CD to be ejected automatically, or to be ejected when the eject button in the drive is pressed. Never got around to trying out what happened if an new disk was inserted as the session crashed.

# 64 It appears from the boot menu in PCLOS 2010 that there is now the boot to RAM option which I think is new in this version, haven't checked back to older isos. However the new feature doesn't seem to be quite finished . . . or at any rate state of the art.88 • archiso/slitaz hybrid from godane (by gnomic on 2010-04-29 06:47:20 GMT from New Zealand)
For those with a taste for the unusual see godane.wordpress.com for a version of slitaz 3 - 151MB iso. Boots on a ThinkPad Z60m, and an early 2000's 2.8GHz Celeron PC here. Additional applications over those included in Slitaz iso include abiword, gnumeric, and VLC.89 • #88 (by Unome on 2010-04-29 08:44:05 GMT from United States)
Godane did something with Wolvix based on Arch here but I don't really understand what he did:

http://forums.wolvix.org/general-questions/archlinux-based-wolvix-screenshot/90 • Mandriva release schedule. (by Roy Norris on 2010-04-29 09:11:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Please note that there have been revised release dates for 2010.1 Spring.Beta 2 now scheduled for release on 30/04/10RC " " " " " 14/05/10Final release " " 03/06/10.91 • Arch Linux lost one of its biggest contributors (by Ronald McDonald on 2010-04-29 12:58:42 GMT from United States)
Jan Mette (funkyou) passed away of as-yet unknown causes. Jan was a major contributor to the Arch Linux community, the creator of KDEmod and a founding member of the Chakra team.92 • Ubuntu 10.04 Hit By Major Bug; ISOs Now Being Re-Spun (by ohntheydiditagain on 2010-04-29 14:44:31 GMT from United States)
While Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is scheduled for release today, development of this "Lucid Lynx" release has not been as optimal as many would have liked. There had been many upset over Lucid's use of the Linux 2.6.32 kernel rather than the newer 2.6.33 release and the extensive back-porting that has went on, among other items to cause concern for some users. Last week they were then hit by a serious memory leaking issue within the X.Org Server, which fortunately has now been fixed in time for the release. But now we are onto a new issue. Rather than the Canonical crew and Ubuntu developers around the world spending today celebrating the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, they are busy re-spinning some of the ISOs due to a new "critical" bug.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE5Ng93 • Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 (by John Hopkins on 2010-04-29 15:46:01 GMT from United States)
Lucid is working perfect for me. I have the latest from cdimage, 10/29.94 • lucid-desktop seems ok (by trotter1985 on 2010-04-29 17:12:30 GMT from United States)
I did a dual boot install of a daily build dated April 27 andneeded to update grub to see my Windows 7 install (I liketo install the startup manager regardless, so this wasn't aproblem. I didn't see a daily build for April 28, but I justdid two installations with the daily build for April 29, downloadedfrom cdimage, and all seems fine, including the correctdetection of the Windows 7 build so that it is recognizedin the grub menu with the first reboot.95 • Ubuntu 10.04 OUT TO DOWNLOAD (by Jonathan Klewer on 2010-04-29 17:13:15 GMT from United States)http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04/

FINAL READY TO DOWNLOAD96 • Contribute to mandriva backgrounds (by glyj on 2010-04-29 17:26:47 GMT from France)
You'd like to see your image in mandriva :

++glyj97 • Latest Ubuntu 10.04 is slow live with 256MB RAM (by anticapitalista on 2010-04-29 22:07:37 GMT from Greece)
I live in hope, but, alas, Ubuntu 10.04 is slow when running live with 256MB RAM.I had heard that it would be 'lighter' this time. Debian, MEPIS and sidux all run reasonably well though on the same box (live)98 • How can any release forget to have a torrent? (by Slo Ben on 2010-04-29 22:10:51 GMT from United States)
I have been distro hopping since 1993, download has always been an issue. I will skip the war stories of downloading 100's of megs on a modem.

But how can and distro not use bit torrent? I am lucky if one of these mirrors gives me over 128k download.

Torrent is the way to go. I will pass on any distro that skips this beginning today.

I have my eye on you PCLinuxOS 2010.99 • I have my eye on you PCLinuxOS 2010? (by Master Crash on 2010-04-29 23:25:38 GMT from United States)
PCLOS torrents were posted on linuxtracker.org a week ago. http://pclinuxos.com/?p=595100 • Skipping PCLinuxOS 2010 # 98 (by gnomic on 2010-04-30 00:48:08 GMT from New Zealand)
Well maybe not having a torrent is a reason for skipping PCLOS 2010, tho' it seems they do. Another reason might be that it presently holds my record for the world's crashiest distro. Was this release an early alpha? Have been meaning to detail problems - maybe will get to it later, but in the meantime think terminal beep of death. That is enter an apparently harmless command such as top in a terminal, hear the beep, and watch the gradual meltdown as the gui freezes. Was looking forward to this release, but so far it has not gone well here.101 • #84 - distro for review? PC/OS? (by gnomic on 2010-04-30 01:04:32 GMT from New Zealand)
Memory fails me as to whether anyone here has looked at PC/OS of late, but I have been impressed by the last couple of versions - 10 and 10.1 are the numbers I think. A pleasure to use in terms of the desktop look imho at any rate.

I have seen a couple of quirks, the latest I have was oddly unable to boot into 1280x800 on a ThinkPad whereas previous versions did - however the user was able to reset this with xrandr -s. In a version with Chrome as browser a file in the user's home had to be removed before the browser would start. The principal developer seems to have at least one Big New Idea a week so the overall direction of the project is a moving target, but as I say I have enjoyed using PC/OS of late and found it stable as a live CD.102 • Re #78, #84 (by Vukota on 2010-04-30 03:20:06 GMT from United States)
"Jesse reviewed Scientific Linux because there were multiple requests from DWW readers to do just that. He is being responsive to his readership and I commend him for that."

I didn't complain why it was reviewed, I was complaining that review itself came short to provide these answers and proofs.

About distributions I don't have any new to suggest, since I am running one of the "rock solid" ones, but would like to hear about specialized ones, that covers specific areas- Multimedia editing- TV- Small but good replacements for older Win computers and versions- Live rescue (Linux/Windows)- Security and other audit testing- Graphics- Math, Statistics, Calculus...- Netbooks- Mobile phones...103 • @100 PCLOS (by Keep on Rocking on 2010-04-30 03:39:45 GMT from United States)
It has been rock solid for the majority of the users on their forums. They are already getting bored.104 • No *buntu 10.04 review, please (by Thom on 2010-04-30 04:39:26 GMT from Denmark)
The new *buntu is out but, please, spare us a review in DWW.The hype surrounding the release will ensure that the entire IT press picks up on this. I can't imagine DWW being able to say anything that will not have been said a hundred times already. Besides, *buntu seems to be suffering from the early stages of bloat, but let's not go there :-xDWW should just do what it does so incredibly well - shine a light where the main street press don't see a profit in going; the undergrowth of (primarily) Linux distros, and the wonderful, wacky, and opinionated characters behind them.Rock on DWW...105 • @104 (by fernbap on 2010-04-30 06:05:51 GMT from Portugal)
Hmm.... do i identify some sort of discrimination here?in fact, two: one against Ubuntu, another against bloated distros...106 • 104 - No *buntu review? (by Opti on 2010-04-30 08:00:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am not an ubuntu user (have used it though).

Why say no to a review here? Sure, there will be no shortage of reviewes elsewhere but why should that exclude it from being reviewed here? Is it not useful for Distrowatch regulars to see how it may fare , being tested by a familiar reviewer?

As for the 'bloat', and the live situation: Phoronix benchmarks show that ubuntu is no bad performer (relatively). For the liveCD thing, I have found certain distros to be surprisingly fast when live, but that differential did not translate post-install. And, I have come accross certain slow live environments, that ran surprisingly quickly from HD.

Thanks.107 • Typo @ 106 (by Opti on 2010-04-30 08:03:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Oops, I meant reviews....... :)108 • #104 (by Unome on 2010-04-30 08:17:58 GMT from United States)
I sort of agree. But, at the same time I am typing this from 10.04 and, for me on this machine (PIII-1 GB RAM), it is really fast. The best Ubuntu yet. I do agree that a review would be boring and probably redundant. I like this sentence:

"DWW should just do what it does so incredibly well - shine a light where the main street press don't see a profit in going; the undergrowth of (primarily) Linux distros, and the wonderful, wacky, and opinionated characters behind them."

#97 I am now loading it onto a machine with around the same amount of RAM, actually less. We'll see what happens...Debian worked reasonably well.109 • RE 76 and (by Gidouille du Père UBU on 2010-04-30 10:55:32 GMT from Argentina)
"Am I the only one who didn't get this review?"God knows.. Perhaps a poll would be interesting..."- What is so specific about Scientific Linux?"Nothing: like CEntos (and before, White Boxes) they can work for yaers without failures... If one has remote connections, they do not introduce deterministic bugs..."- What is so "scientific" in it?"Almost nothing : except for recent versions of R and Octave, everything one needs to build grass (but grass itsef should be compiled, with ones favorite options : gdal,geos and the databases API exist in the repos) is shipped,; Mandriva's R versions might be older than SL's ones (it depends on the available time of the contributors).. As it is shipped (in the DVD version) with anything one needs to compile from source (and ordinary users often know how, if they want to program in a stable environment, with nothing unstable except one's bugs, not the latest and greatest ones), does it really matter?

"- Why would I even bother to try it?"Just to see if changes the length of the day and the size of our galaxy" What is it that it stands out about this distro from rest of the crowd?'"It has a GIMP preshipped...It has less ubugsUnlike PCLOL, all the development headers are available.Unlike PCLOL and Antix, a fully featured vim out of the box... not sarcastic comments...'- Is it "rock solid"? I guess not.'

Does 'rock solid' translate in any language (it s a slogan and rock solidity cannot be measured )?

"Does - It "works"... so what? Aren't all distros supposed to "work". There are enough of them that do in that area pretty good job, with better support and larger test base".

If larger test base has a relevant meaning, one must admit that W$7 is 40 times better than any GNUlinux distribution..... Else, what is the value of empirical test base??.

Red Hat seems to do a pretty good support job(and their price is deserved, but one must check it before, as it is more expensive than W$XP's price!) .As for gcc and python numerology , it is very easy to get newer versions of gcc (at least, up to the 4.4x family) and of python (the latest 2.6 branch) with a ritual "configue && make && make install". If labs want to check their compilers and libraries for exact results (by comparing tons of benchmarks to an exact solution), they do it once or twice in a computer's life time and then do not want to change versions.

BTW, LLR's sorrows seemed linked to hischoosing the CD instead of the DVD: I prefer using the DVD, as it ships more useful things (R is preinstalled, which seldom occurs).110 • reviews (by forlin on 2010-04-30 11:04:14 GMT from Portugal)
from my own observation, from previous released ubuntu, reviewed here: on that week there was a record number of comments at this page. My conclusion is : Yes, DWW users like, and are interested to know what is the Distrowatch opinion, about each new Ubuntu released.111 • @105 (by Thom on 2010-04-30 12:08:35 GMT from Denmark)
Discriminating against bloat is a cause I support ;-)As for *buntu... no discrimination intended. They'll get miles of media exposure as it is, which can't be bad.112 • philosophy of linux (by Anonymous on 2010-04-30 13:35:03 GMT from Canada)
On the Edubuntu wiki there is the following:https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdubuntuFAQ.the solution is to add one line of text (shown) and then a command.My question is:why should the user (all of them) be expected to do this.?It would seem to be so easy for one developer to mdify the iso that we all download.Obviously I don't sqat about programming.Thanks
113 • Distro Reviews (by sly on 2010-04-30 14:09:06 GMT from United States)
I would love to see a review of the new Ubuntu. As a matter of fact, I think all of the top 10 distros should be reviewed in DWW when they are released.

The rest of the pack should be cycled through a rolling basis with some leeway to DWW within the process for introducing new or innovative distros.114 • RE: 111, What Do You Mean By Bloat? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-04-30 14:52:19 GMT from United States)
I'm not really sure what people often mean by bloat. Is it saying a distro has too much installed? Is it saying a distro is too slow? Is it saying a distro has too much unneeded stuff running? To me "bloat" is another useless term. It is useless to me because everything in its meaning is relative to what a person wants in a distro, to what a person will use his computer for, and also to the person's hardware, and so on, and so on. Bloat can mean so much and at the same time really mean nothing at all of any value. Bloat is one of the few words that need an explanation with it. just like "works out of the box" phrase. It depends on what you are trying to do. There are just too many variables and that's why a person need to find out for them self's what a distro will do.

Happy hunting everyone.Eddie115 • Re: #109 (by Vukota on 2010-04-30 17:16:09 GMT from United States)
"If larger test base has a relevant meaning, one must admit that W$7 is 40 times better than any GNUlinux distribution..... Else, what is the value of empirical test base??."

Well, it certainly means that it gets at least 20 times more bug reports submitted to them than any Linux distribution (alone) and that they have at least 20 times more developers (skilled) to fix these issues, and yes, it means that they have production grade tested their product (where as many Linux distributions/applications fail on this one).

Onother question is why the issues are not being fixed and appropriately addressed and why MS is slow in reacting on them and accepting ideas and feedbacks from its own user base. (I am not here to help MS and enough about them).116 • Ubuntu review (by Jesse on 2010-04-30 17:33:27 GMT from Canada)
For those of you curious, I did decide to write a review of Ubuntu. There were a few reasons

1. Most of the reviews I've read out there on Ubuntu basically read like press releases: There's a new Ubuntu out, it boots faster, I installed codecs. End of review. So, yes, there is a sea of Ubuntu reviews out there, but most of them don't look deeper than the desktop wallpaper (apologies to any Ubuntu reviewers reading) and I want to share something a little deeper than that. I wanted to share something with an interview, some screen shots and with an eye toward both technical and political issues.

2. It's been a while since we saw a plain Ubuntu review here. I think it was about a year ago. Once a year doesn't seem so bad, when you consider how many Ubuntu users there are. Including the readership here. Plus it's an LTS release, which I think deserves a little attention.

3. It's a distro and, this being DistroWatch, I don't think I should skip a distribution just because it's popular. Just like I don't think I should ignore MINIX because it's niche.

So, Ladislav willing, we will see an Ubuntu review in the near future.117 • #116 (by Unome on 2010-04-30 18:24:02 GMT from United States)
Well...when you put it like that it kind of makes sense. I will be looking forward to reading your review.

#97 Thumbs down on running the live cd on an older machine. I had the same experience as you did. I am going to try the Xfce version.118 • RE: 76 - 86 (by Landor on 2010-04-30 21:30:06 GMT from Canada)
#76 I think we should ask me to finally and properly define what Linux for human beings means from his perspective. One concrete and singular definition. :)

As you do, I explain the caveats or pitfalls as well. One of the first things I'm asked is about OO usually. Strangely too. That has its own problems as well. My biggest gripe was formatting in printing. Then of course you explain the differences in installable applications and how they're OS specific. That one always makes me smile when I'm asked, "But why?". :) This is of course for the laymen and not in an enterprise solution.

#86

I guess it's true we all have different reasons. I'm in no way being rude here either, but I can't see an immediate upgrade from one release to another as a means to an end of boredom. I could see switching to another WM or a completely different type of distribution, possibly its target audience/area, or totally different applications. For completely reinstalling every 6 months (or less) for the sake of doing it when obviously for the person the applications and the whole build of that release worked well, I find that odd. More so if it has a supported shelf life of 18 months or so.

---

Before I forget. I think the MeeGo project is a real pain and Nokia has made a major mistake. I'm no proponent of Google by far (data-mining megaliths are inherently evil) but they've beaten Nokia and let's say Intel to the punch with Android. I was going to buy a N900 instead of a droid phone but when I found out that Nokia was switching the software, thus making the phone totally useless as it's software would not be unsupported, I didn't even look at it. I didn't buy a smart phone in the end due to the limited choices.

So the whole time the N900 is on the market with a dead-end OS, droid is gaining more momentum and Nokia's messing around with another OS that won't hit their phones until when?

I consider the latest Ubuntu release to be ho-hum, a lot of the same ole, same ole. What's caught my eye is NimbleX has a new release and they haven't had one for some time. There's one project that truly innovated how we as a community get Linux.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor119 • Correction: (by Landor on 2010-04-30 21:42:30 GMT from Canada)
I was on the phone while typing up post 118 (happens a lot..lol) First line should read "I think we should ask Mark Shuttleworth"*

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor120 • @118 (by fernbap on 2010-04-30 22:19:53 GMT from Portugal)
I think that, if you ask Mark Shuttleworth (MS lol!) in private what it means, he will tell you that it's just a catchy phrase invented by his marketing department. Come to think of it, it means nothing (a quality all good catchy phrases have).

As for upgrading every 6 months, well, i was happy with 8.10, but then 9.04 was a disaster. Uninstalled pulseaudio completely, and then it became decent (provided you didn't enable compiz). So, i was hoping 9.10 would fix it. 9.10 fixed some things, but created a new sort of problems. However, pulseaudio became usable, but still not reliable.Being a LTS release, i was hoping 10.04 would be much more well built (basically, in the *buntu world, LTS releases are "stable" releases, the others are "testing" releases), and i am happy to say that so far i found all the those issues fixed in 10.04.I think you will be close to the truth if you consider 9.04 and 9.10 beta releases of 10.04.Why upgrade? Well, it's a way to learn. It's also a way to keep you in contact to what's being done. And, of course, if you're a distro hopper at heart...I really hope 10.04 is as good as it seems to be so far, because a lot of ubuntu based distros will benefit from it. It's not only about Ubuntu, you know.Personaly, i use Mint, but usually keep the latest Ubuntu in another partition (amongst others) because i like to know what the new Mint will be based on.Ubuntu in itself doesn't attract me, because i don't like the kind of choices Ubuntu has made lately (nothing to do with the buttons on the left, i even find them kinda cool), and it doesn't offer me the choices i would make. Only a fool would keep his personal data in an unknown server somewhere on the web. Besides, dropbox is more than enough.Ubuntu is becoming too "commercial" for my taste.121 • RE: 120 and 118 (by Jesse on 2010-05-01 00:24:08 GMT from Canada)
Actually, I had the chance to hear Mark Shuttleworth talk about his concept of "Linux for human beings" (tm?) earlier this week. Though I may have my own slant on it, he seemed to be saying that "Linux for human beings" means taking Linux, which has previously been used mostly by hobbyists, admins, developers, technical folks, etc... and actively presenting it to the masses in such as way as they can make use of it. Hopefully as easily, or better, than other desktop popular desktop OSes. As I understood him, he seemed to feel that was a multi-approach task, which includes the technical side (development and UI), business (OEMs and ISVs) and marketing (presenting the product to people).

Personally, I think Ubuntu has done well at that so far. A lot of people have heard of or tried Ubuntu who hadn't heard of Linux before. Companies like Dell sell laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed.122 • PCLinuxOS 2010 review? (by Francisco on 2010-05-01 00:28:04 GMT from Ecuador)
I will also like to suggest a proper PCLinuxOS 2010 review as the one planned for Ubuntu.

In the "Latest distributions" section there we can found mention for each of the *buntu flavors, but when PCLinuxOS was released there was only one mention (to the main KDE version), even if there was 6 variants to choose from.

No, not another buntu hater, just seeking more equity on distros anouncements and reviews.123 • RE: 122 PCLinuxOS 2010 review? (by ladislav on 2010-05-01 00:41:55 GMT from Taiwan)
Well, Jesse has already written one for OSNews:

so I doubt he'll be doing another one for DistroWatch. But as always, if somebody else wants to take the initiative and submit one, I won't have any objections.124 • Re: 123• RE: 122 PCLinuxOS 2010 review? (by Francisco on 2010-05-01 02:04:56 GMT from Ecuador)
Thanks ladislav for the pointer, I haven't seen that review before.125 • An OS for the masses? and phones. (by jake on 2010-05-01 04:56:49 GMT from United States)
My definition of an OS for the masses is "one that works for most users without the users having any issues". In my opinion, it doesn't exist. Probably never will. Don't believe me? Work the helldesk of your OS of choice for a couple fortnights ... You see, the problem with "general purpose computers" is that they are ...err ... general purpose.

THAT said, my technophobe Mom & computer illiterate Great Aunt both run a variation of Slackware ... I set up their systems to suit the way that they use computers (just as I did for WinXP for both of them, before I got sick of maintaining their systems over the continual MS/anti-malware update cycle). It ain't the OS, it's the cognizant installer. Trying to make an OS that works for everyone, all the time, just makes for yet another Shovelware DVD(set).

As for phones ... I carry a ten year old Nokia 5185. It just works. But then, all I want a phone to do is make and receive phone calls ... I have computers to do computing, stereo gear to do stereo, video gear to do video, etc. My old Nokia makes and receives phone calls quite nicely. 48-ish hours on standby, and a couple hours of talking, when needed (on it's original battery, no less!). Even in the so-called "dead zones" here in Sonoma Valley, CA. Can't ask for more than that out of a phone.126 • #125 (by Unome on 2010-05-01 11:54:36 GMT from United States)
I find that 99% of the problems I run into are user related and have virtually nothing to do with the operating system. I am constantly called to fix problems caused by someone's kid trying to install things the parents know nothing about. They think the computer just started acting "funny" all by itself. Then I ask them if they installed xyz program and the bells go off.127 • OpenGEU (by Unome on 2010-05-01 12:01:44 GMT from United States)
Good news, OpenGEU is moving to Debian:

http://opengeu.intilinux.com/news128 • #121 (by Caranavi on 2010-05-01 12:32:24 GMT from United States)
Instead of a review how about just making a list of distros that are not listed here as independent distros for whatever reasons. I know of a few but I am afraid I might be missing out on something...I am always searching for that perfect smaller distro.129 • 125 (by Barnabyh on 2010-05-01 13:15:47 GMT from South Africa)
Same here Jake, a mobile phone to me is a phone and not a camera/mp3player/pda etc. device. Although mine is not 10 years old as I got mugged a year ago, but I just bought the cheapest one in the shop which is still miles ahead of my old phone (colour display). Bet the muggers had fun selling that old piece.When people tell me they can't wait to upgrade their barely six months old Samsung touchscreen to the new iphone I only smile...if it keeps them happy.

On that note, no need for Slackware 13.1 either, 13.0 is still working fine.130 • buntu (by Wired Leroy on 2010-05-01 18:04:14 GMT from Serbia)
# 116 - "and with an eye toward both technical and political issues"

Oh dear. Have one, or 20 additional moderators on standby to tackle comments on that review...

Anyway I second this, there should be a review of Ubuntu. I'm trying/using it now and I think it has improved. Or maybe 9.10 was so bad that anything, really, has to look good now :) It runs fine, after I switched window control buttons where they should be and got rid of the wallpaper and also got rid of quite a few apps that come as default, it's been uneventful. It's stable, recognizes whatever I plug into it and it does "just work".

About Linux for Human Beings, well it's simple. It means Ubuntu is for regular folks, even though M$ who fathered it with Debian is in fact a robot ;) Or maybe like someone said, it means nothing. Much like the word "ubuntu". I don't think it has any real meaning anywhere. It's an idea.

Overall, I think the Linux world should criticize Ubuntu when it's bad, more so than other distros, because Ubuntu's our best chance like it or not. Criticize it though hoping it would improve and not for the sake of criticizing. And since a lot of us do a lot of criticizing, I think it's our obligation to say it when Ubuntu's good, and I think this is it. I really like what I'm seeing of this 10.04 so far.

My regards to the Phone Resistance crowd here :) I too held out with a Sony from before Sony Ericsson until I recently came across a Motorola I was unable to resist.But perfectly sound logic, to have phones for phone calls and cookers for cooking. Also gaming consoles for gaming instead of PCs.131 • Phones and Yoper (by Landor on 2010-05-01 20:56:23 GMT from Canada)
I'm not saying I fit into this category, because I don't, but it's all in how you view things.

Some people view a car as a mode of transportation only. Some people view their vehicle as a prize they almost near worship with the care they bestow upon it, taking it far beyond the level of a mere mode of transportation. We view computers as computers, televisions as televisions, phones as phones. Some people have changed they way they view things and interact with the world based on recent advances in technology. I know a number of people that no longer have a land line, only a cell. They also don't have a computer. They use their phone as a device that incorporates their lifestyle fully. It's a mp3 player, they watch YouTube with it, interact on Facebook, twitter and the like. They also text and low and behold, phone people from time to time and have people call them. All of this is an extremely mobile package small enough to fit in their pockets or purses. Also, they have one bill to worry about instead of a couple. There's also the bonus for them of not purchasing the separate items that would far exceed the cost of the one device.

Me, I have a small flip phone that I only text on or make calls. I personally would enjoy the portability and mobility of such a device over my netbook for when I don't expect to be doing any form of computing that needs that kind of power while I'm away from home but still have the desire or need to have access available.

Socially computing has changed drastically in the last few years. I personally believe that these devices are extremely well suited as an alternative computing option for teens and young adults. Also, what's even better, though they wouldn't even know, they're Linux based. :)

Anyone download Yoper? I was happy to see a release for it right after NimbleX. Yoper has always been a great project though I have run into a a couple snags with the KDE3 version just released. One being for the package manager running live when I hover the mouse over any of the buttons a dialog box shows up with no text in it as to the button's function. I'll have to actually install it and see if things change.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor132 • re#131 (by hab on 2010-05-01 21:50:45 GMT from Canada)
I think more importantly some one will figure out how to seamlessly move your (metaphorical you) current software stack and data to whatever device, stationary or mobile that your happen to be on at the moment. Transition from desktop to phone to netbook to ereader. All of your faves and necessaries right there for you ready to use.

Now that would be a bit of progress!

Much backend grunt handled by linux. In all likelihood.

Clouds or some such may be required.

cheers133 • All BSD's such big time (by Anonymous on 2010-05-01 23:32:20 GMT from Brazil)
From the MaheshaBSD web site:

"Packaging FreeBSD original installation disk (CD) into MaheshaBSD"

(The thing doesn't even have an installer... Pathetic!)

Why all BSDs (except PC-BSD) are half-baked?134 • re: 132 & phones again ... (by jake on 2010-05-02 02:04:44 GMT from United States)
I've had that for ages on my personal network ... Starting in the late 1970s, probably 1978 or thereabouts. Kinda the point of running a un*x, no?

"Clouds", on the other hand, are a marketing term. Roughly translated, it means "we control all your processes and data, and once it's in our system(s) we can do whatever we like with it, neener, neener, neener". I avoid anything that claims to be "cloud" related. Suggest you do, too.

As for folks carrying all singing, all dancing telephones ... More power to them. Personally, when I leave my office, datacenter and machine room, I don't WANT to be connected. Only around two dozen folks have my cell number ... and they all know that it had better be a bloody big emergency to get ahold of me that way. After more than a third of a century in IT, most of the time I want to be AWAY from computers ... That's why I run Slackware. It just works.135 • RE: 130/Gaming Consoles & 132 (by Landor on 2010-05-02 02:05:12 GMT from Canada)
#130/Gaming Consoles:

Now I know both our views are opinion and I somewhat agree that consoles are a place for games to be played, I don't agree that computers are not. I've been playing games on the computer since some of the very first "decent" flight/flight-combat sims. There's not a console out that can even come close to giving you the experience of air combat (excluding graphics here) compared to an 8086, seriously. Based on that with the sims of today and the more powerful systems there's not even a chance of a console being comparable. Also, there's FSPs. Nothing beats the speed and graphics while playing one on a computer. Then there's the keyboard factor. My son gave up trying to fight against me with his gamepad..lol Some games are meant for a computer (thus far) and some are better aesthetically and in playability than the console. Very much so. A good thing is Linux has a massive roundup of all kinds of games available. I just downloaded/installed one of the most relaxing games I've ever played, OSMOS (http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/ ) I'll definitely be purchasing this indie game.

#132

Good to see you again, Hab. I think what you're talking about is extremely viable in the very near future and I have no doubt this is where some of the more forward thinkers have thought of getting us to. Before that happens the solution will have to be cross-platform for sure. Well, I guess not. It could be specific as long as each device was operating from the same OS. The main reason I see this as happening is simply because people are becoming more and more of an "instant on" microwave culture. They want (and need in some cases) what they want and need available across any medium. I can see this being crucial in many cases and I do believe that Linux will be pulling more than its fair share of the load, as always. I'm guess you were bang on with that view.

Oh, reading the link about OpenGEU, I noticed that it's not far off for E-17 to have an actual release. I remembered you liked it and wasn't sure if you knew already. Good news in my opinion.

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor136 • Wired Leroy's question ... (by capricornus on 2010-05-02 07:05:44 GMT from Belgium)
Last week I reported shortly on my installing Lynx on 4 different systems. I'll repeat it for Leroy: I used the latest RC on a Intelx2, a AMDx2, a EeePc and an older Athlon2000-laptop. For the first time - in my experience - 1 OS fits them all, without any major problems. Everything ran out of the box; LAN, WIFI, NAS, NAS-connected usbPrinter. I followed the advice to install the restricted software packages. I prefer Swiftfox, Thunderbird and VLC and see no use for Gwibber, since I tend to use the browser-version Meebo. CrossOver (32) installed just as easily, on all 4 (the AMD64-version needs ia32-libs installed of course).137 • re: # 134 (by jack on 2010-05-02 14:08:47 GMT from Canada)
so "clouds" is a pseudonym for "Borg"?"resistance is futile..."138 • phones to phone (by forlin on 2010-05-02 15:02:30 GMT from Portugal)
phones to phone, cookers to cook. I almost agree. Excluding if I can avoid taking a phone in a pocket, and a music/cam/mp4 in other pocket. That said, it's handy to be able to phone, listen music, watch a small mp4, and even take a unique instant pic, from an all in one device. Further things up, only for very particular needs, or for those with money who cannot resist to marketing.139 • Re: 137 (The meaning of "Clouds") (by Lobo Mau on 2010-05-02 23:47:21 GMT from Brazil)
> so "clouds" is a pseudonym for "Borg"?> "resistance is futile..."

How happy I am for not being a sheep!!!140 • re #131 YOPER - the distro without a reason to exist? (by gnomic on 2010-05-03 06:59:26 GMT from New Zealand)
Mention of YOPER above - afraid I swore off this for life after sampling various previous versions and not being able to find a machine they would work on. However I tried again with the XFCE and LXDE variants of the latest. No, they still haven't fixed the problem with i915 video on a ThinkPad Z60m - only the top 40% of the screen displays gui contents, the remainder is blank swatch of colour. Now that's a FAIL right there. Sheesh. A generic 2.8 GHz Celeron PC with a 64MB nvidia GeForce card and a CRT actually managed to boot properly - w00t! So then there was a barebones Xfce with Firefox 3.6.3, no Flash, no wifi firmware. LXDE version has Ff 3.6.2, abiword 2.8.2, Gnumeric 1.9.17, Inkscape 0.46, GIMP 2.6.8. Neither version had any ttys configured, no CTRL+ALT+Fx to switch to a console. Then there's the somewhat clumsy structure of the live CD which doesn't make it clear whether it's an installer or a live CD until some way into booting. Hmmm, no, can't see a unique selling point here. Kernel is 2.6.33 ZEN. Personally I'd be looking at NimbleX, archbang, crunchbang, antiX, and godane's spin of slitaz rather than YOPER. Can't see anything that is not being done better elsewhere.

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